Batman is probably my favorite comic book character (I go back and forth between him and the X-Men – which I know is a group of characters, but you’ll just have to deal with that.) I love that he doesn’t have any true superpowers, I love that he’s often more detective than superhero, and he has a great Rogue’s Gallery of villains.

I realize I don’t talk about comics all that much in these pages, but I like the idea of writing more small reviews and telling personal stories. I want to make this old blog more of a blog.  Maybe. Tomorrow I’ll probably change my mind, but for now I’m talking about Batman.

Batman: Killing Time is a limited series written by Tom King and illustrated by David Marquez. It begins with three villains – The Penguin, The Riddler, and Catwoman, who pull off the heist of the century. But then they immediately begin double crossing one another. It is up to Batman to put the clues together and pick up the pieces.

King tells the story with an off-kilter timeline. He does this thing where he’ll start a page with the date and a specific time, and then on the next page he’ll tell us it is exactly 1 hour and fifteen minutes later or whatever. Back and forth, back and forth, each pages, sometimes multiple times a page the time changes.  Sometimes he’ll go back hundreds, thousands of years to tell us a little mythology. This mostly ties together in an interesting way by the conclusion, but it is also a little confusing. 

At some point a new villain, The Help, is introduced. He’s kind of like Alfred from the Pennyworth TV series (which I quite liked and recommend) in that he’s got an English butler vibe but with loads of combat training).  He’s an interesting character, but then he just kind of disappears.  That’s about the time a foul mouthed US agent shows up who’s ready to wipe everybody out if the secret, possibly magical MacGuffin gets into the wrong hands.  

The story is fine. It isn’t anything special, but it worked well enough for me. The mastermind of the whole thing is apparently some obscure villain that hasn’t been seen in the comics for a long time. I didn’t know him, but the character makes sense within the context of the story and I liked him. But I’d be hard pressed to give you the details of what happened now that I’ve finished it.

The artwork is excellent. One of the things I love about Batman comics is that the artwork often has a noir feel to it and that’s implemented here to great effect. 

Overall, a quite good comic. Not Batman’s best, but well worth the read.